Nokia finally explains the technology behind ClearBlack displays

Nokia's ClearBlack Display technology has been announced in September 2010, but only now did they explained this technology fully. We knew that CBD adds a polarizing filter to a display (which can be either an LCD or an OLED) - but Nokia now tells us that the filter is placed between the touch layer and the actual display - which enables it to block incoming light and not harm the contrast or color quality. In the photo below, we can see a normal C6-01 phone with a CBD display (on the left) and the same phone without the CBD layer (on the right):

While the technology behind CBD displays is quite different to the one used in Samsung's Super AMOLED displays (which uses an on-cell touch layer) - the resulting image quality and behavior under sunlight is pretty similar in both display technologies.

CBD displays is used in five Nokia handsets (the E7 and the C6-01, the N9 and the Lumia 710 and Lumia 800) - out of which only the Lumia 710 uses an LCD - the rest has AMOLED displays.